Over My Dead Body.

I was visiting the National Museum of History in Bucharest on one of my recent visits home. They had an exhibition on poisonous spiders and scorpions and I decided to check it out. Who wouldn’t?

The gift shop at the museum was selling different bits and pieces, among which beautiful, black, dead scorpions cast in small transparent blocks of glass. All packed and ready to take home with you as a souvenir.

I was tempted to buy one. A beautiful dead scorpion, otherwise elusively deadly when alive, for my mantelpiece. I couldn’t.

I realised you are never meant to hold these creatures captive and infringe on their liberty – least of all when they’re dead.